Hi All,
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/04/29/comprehnsive-evaluation-of-wiki-contri…
Blog post released on the new process we pioneered & followed for
recognizing wikimedians for KLRWP awards given in Telugu Wikipedia
decennial celebrations.
Congratulations to award winners.
Thanks to all Telugu wikipedians. Judging Committee.
Special thanks to Arjuna Rao for the amazing support, contribution &
driving in every stage.
--
Thanks & Regards,
A.Radha Krishna
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Arkrishna
Being a silent listner on the list for quite some time.
There are some points Asaf and WMF staff are not talking about.
When it comes to funding the chapter in any way, all kinds of questions are
raised. So much so that the chapter staff member left the organisation. At
the same time, A2K and the previous organisation/mechanism has huge money
without any accountability or publically given targets and its completions.
In simple terms, there is no transperency in this(A2K) regards from WMF.
Both chapter and A2K share the same pool of volunteers. chapter people are
purely volunteers and A2K people are paid staff.
Comparing other chapters -with WMIN- like WMUK or Netherland chapter etc.
for funding mechanism is wrong as WMIN is possibly not even allowed to
become part of global fundraiser.
If any "volunteer" wants to work for some project, there are two simple
options- either to reach to WMIN who apprantly have no funds and will be
asked all kinds of questions by WMF OR reachout to A2K who have absolutely
no restrictions on funding any project and no further hassles also. So, if
Gerard or any "volunteer" can answer where to join for a project, you will
always get a simple and obviously biased (from the facts mentioned above)
answer.
If ultimately eveything is coming to money matters, a team of some 10
people handling 10 milion INR compared to begging to WMF by chapter speaks
out loud and clear.
If WMF wants to see both the organisations working to wards their
objectives, they should not have this kind of discrimination.
I am sorry if I am talking something wrong. Please correct me wherever
needed. All that I have said is after reading the pages for grant requests
and further discussions and A2K reports and future plans and ofcourse this
mail thread.
-ZZ
The on-going conversation at the Grants application page of CIS-A2K has also seen some comments made about the Wikimedia India Chapter. You can read the conversation on-wiki - https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants_talk:APG/Proposals/2013-2014_round2/….
I would encourage the community members who have thus far engaged CIS-A2K with criticism to also take the time and effort to do the same with the Wikimedia India Chapter. As Asaf points out in the above conversation, the Chapter is a community created resource and I think it is upto the community to decide on the effectiveness of the work done by this organisation. Without community involvement, no matter how passionate the WMIN EC or a few members inside the Chapter are, it will not make any impact.
I see no communication from the WMIN EC on their own grant application and their status thereafter. I do believe they were wronged in not getting the funds they requested for. However, I think it would be mature to move on and also to use the interim period to build resources that seek to make WMIN's funding sources independent of WMF and to expand membership.
If the WMIN EC would thus like to engage the community, I would suggest that they open a conversation on wiki (preferably, Meta) in what they seek from community members and to try and understand what community members expect from the Chapter. Revitalising the Wikimedia India chapter is in the long term interest of the movement in India. Keeping the Chapter accountable is the community's responsibility. However, it is for each community member and not a few to make this decision. Help has been offered to the Chapter from WMF, CIS-A2K and I am sure from the community as well. I would love to see the chapter revitalised and a pragmatic programme evolved around the same.
Pradeep Mohandas
How Pradeep uses email? - http://goo.gl/6v1I9
Dear Asaf,
As far as my knowledge goes, it was a coordinated approach of the editors.
The counts includes all types of articles including stubs.
Muzammil
Can you tell us a little more about this increase? Urdu Wikipedia had
~27.5k articles in February. Much bot-generated content?
Thanks,
Asaf
Hi,
This may be of interest. I hope we can do this in India in May?
Warm regards,
Pradeep
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: *Sarah Stierch* <sarah.stierch(a)gmail.com>
Date: Saturday, 19 April 2014
Subject: Adrianne Wadewitz Tribute Edit-a-thons
Hi everyone,
I have created the event page for the Adrianne Wadewitz Tribute
Edit-a-thons that will be taking place around the world in May. This event
is a coordinated project of HASTAC and FemTech. We hope you'll plan an
event - no matter how big or small - and participate.
Please spread the word and add your event listing here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wadewitz_Tribute_Edit-a-thons
Thank you,
Sarah
--
Sarah Stierch
-----
Diverse and engaging consulting for your organization.
www.sarahstierch.com
--
Sent from Gmail Mobile for iPhone
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliations_Committee
states that
"The *Affiliations Committee* (formerly known as *Chapters Committee*,
colloquially *AffCom*) is a Wikimedia community
committee<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Wikimedia_Foundation_boar…>entrusted
with advising the Wikimedia
Foundation Board of
Trustees<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Wikimedia_Foundation_Boar…>on
the approval of new movement
affiliates<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Wikimedia_affiliation_mod…>:
national or subnational chapters, thematic organisations and user groups.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_affiliation_models
recognizes only an additional category of affiliation called "Movement
partners" which states that
"Like-minded organizations that actively support the Wikimedia movement’s
work. They are listed publicly and granted limited use of the marks for
publicity indicating their support of and collaboration with Wikimedia."
Examples for like minded organizations are Mozilla, Creative Commons,
WikiEducator, Freenode. A glaring observation about these examples are that
they don't get involved with direct Wikimedia content generation work.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_affiliation_models/Movement_Partne…
is itself in draft stage yet and there are no known (at least to me)
movement partners publicly listed yet.
There are no clear guidelines on the nature of work they can do and the
extent of funding they can get.
There are very clear requirements and application page for chapters,
thematic organizations and user groups. Please see the
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requirements_for_future_thematic_organizatio…
In the infobox in the same page, you can see that there are clear and
strict guidelines, agreements and requirements that should be met by all
such organizations.
So, my question is:
How is CIS-A2K eligible to get Annual Plan Grant through FDC? What is it's
status within the Wikimeda affiliation model? Where are the guidelines,
requirements and agreements for that?
It is not a joke to be recognized as a movement parter sans any
transparency and bottom-up process when other affiliates like chapters and
thematic organizations (like Amical Wikimedia) make a very tedious journey
to be recognized.
If there is no convincing answer for this, CIS-A2K program can only be seen
as a proxy program run by WMF to achieve its strategic goals in the region
and it has no business doing work that should be done by the WMIN and the
respective language communities.
Lack of "mature" regional communities / affiliates is not an excuse to fund
unrecognized entities like this.
Extensive guidelines should be drafted for movement partners, CIS-A2K
should go through the process and then only can it become eligible to apply
for next round of funds irrespective of its legacy and history.
Thanks,
Ravi
Hey,
Just wanted to let you know that Shanmugam has been elected as a Steward
recently. He started editing in Tamil Wikipedia and serves as a sysop there.
He is available in the Indian time zone and should be able to make sense of
issues involving some of the Indian language Wikimedia projects.
Do reach him at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Shanmugamp7 if you need
help from a steward.
Ravi
'Wikitrack' started out from an idea that I had about tracking edits on
Wikipedia from mobile. I always felt that there's more to tracking edits
and their quality on Wikipedia. For one, we could zero-in on better
contributors than just going by the edit counts. And doing that for mobile
could be good for a tool that can be used on the go.
WikiTrack in its initial version had been released last year for Wikipedia
projects of few Indian languages, namely Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada and
Sanskrit for Android. The initial version allows the users to just track
the Recent Changes, the diff between changes, their Watchlist and any
user's contributions. Each of these have seen thousands of downloads (As of
the day of sending this email: WikiTrack Tamil[1] - 17345 downloads with
an average rating of 4.2 out of 5, WikiTrack Kannada[2] - 14480 downloads
with an average rating of 4.038 out of 5 and WikiTrack Malayalam [3] with
7756 downloads with an average rating of 3.8 out of 5 on Google's Play
Store) with thousands of active users tracking their favorite Wikimedia
project using this application. The project so far has been self-funded and
the source code of the app has been released under GPL.
I've put in an IEG Proposal[4] with a goal to consolidate these different
apps into one and to provide support for all Indian languages and beyond
(covering as many languages as possible), to rewrite the code, to make it
better and to extend it further to improve the utility of the app including
a release for iOS.
The idea is to achieve the above goal and get it to a good shape before
planning further on including other useful ways of allowing the editors to
track Wikimedia projects from mobile and to keep them engaged.
I realize that this is the very last minute request, but would love to hear
feedback about it.
[1]
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.saaranga.wikitracktamil
[2] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.saaranga.wikikannada
[3]
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.saaranga.wikitrackmalayal…
[4] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/WikiTrack
If you are a user of the WikiTrack app, you can help by endorsing the
proposal to improve the chances of getting WikiTrack extended in future.
--
Hari Prasad Nadig
http://hpnadig.nethttp://twitter.com/hpnadighttp://flickr.com/hpnadig